A Share In Death

CHAPTER 16

Hannah lay sprawled head down, half on her back, her arms flung out as if she had tried to break her fall. While part of Kincaid’s mind reeled with shock, another part noted details-her sweater, the same soft peach as her socks, had ridden up and exposed a wide, pale slice of skin. Her ribs, so ungracefully bared, rose and fell rhythmically.

Relief rushed through Kincaid in a sickening wave. He closed his eyes and breathed a moment, steadying himself, then maneuvered into a kneeling position beside her. Although her head seemed twisted at an awkward angle, her color looked healthy and he didn’t think she was deeply unconscious. He touched her shoulder gently. “Hannah.” She made a soft sound and her eyelids fluttered. He tried again, more urgently. “Hannah.” Her eyes opened and she looked fuzzily at him, her expression blank. “Hannah. Hannah!”

A flicker of recognition moved in Hannah’s eyes. She turned her head a little and winced. “What…” She shifted again, feeling and cognizance returning together. “My head. Oh, my god. What hap-” She tried to lift herself and pain shot through her face.

“Careful, careful. Take it easy. What hurts?”

“My head… the back of it.”

“Not your neck?”

Tentatively, she rolled her head a little each way. “No. It seems okay.”

“Good. Can you move your legs?” She flexed each leg and nodded. “Okay. That’s good. No, wait,” Kincaid said as she struggled to pull herself into a sitting position. “Let’s do this a stage at a time.” He slid his arm beneath her head and supported it level with her shoulders. “Better?”

“Yes. I think I’m all right, really. I can feel everything, and move everything.” Hannah drew up her arms and legs again, demonstrating. “God, I feel like Humpty Dumpty.” She gave a ghost of a smile.

“I’m just glad you don’t look it,” Kincaid said with feeling. He hesitated to move her, but after a few more minutes of Hannah complaining about the blood running to her head, he temporized. Slipping his arm under her shoulders, he lifted and turned her so that she sat across the step with her back against the wall.

Hannah moved her head fretfully. “I’m all right. Let me get-”

“Wait.” Kincaid interrupted her. “Let’s assess the damage first.” He ran his fingers lightly over the back of her head. Near the crown a lump was already rising. “You’re definitely going to have an egg, but the skin’s not broken. What else?”

She clasped her right wrist in her left hand. “My wrist hurts like hell, but I can move it.”

“Anything else?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay. I imagine you’re going to have some bruising.” As he straightened up he found his hands were trembling, and his fingertips seemed to retain an imprint of the texture of her hair and the swelling of the lump beneath it. The reaction would pass, he knew, and he pushed away that first image etched in his brain-Hannah lying still and broken beneath him.

“Now, tell me what happened.”

For the first time Hannah looked afraid. “I was standing at the top of the stairs. The landing door opened-I remember wondering in a vague sort of way why I didn’t hear footsteps or the normal jingly noises people make when they walk. Then I felt a hand at my back.”

“Did you see-”

“No. There wasn’t time. Just a hard shove and that’s really all I remember.” She felt her wrist gingerly. “I must have tried to stop myself falling.”

Kincaid touched her arm. “Hannah, are you sure you don’t know who it was? Not even an impression?”

She shook her head. “No. Why would-”

The front door slammed and they heard quick footsteps crossing the porch. Patrick Rennie came into the hall, his color high as if with anger or excitement. He stopped when he saw them and looked from one to the other, puzzled. “Hannah? Why… what happened?” His tone shifted from bewilderment to concern as he took in Kincaid’s protective posture. “Are you all right?”

Kincaid, his hand still on Hannah’s arm, felt her stiffen. When she didn’t speak he answered for her. “She’s quite bruised and shaken.” He paused, studying Rennie’s face. “Someone pushed her down the stairs.”

Rennie looked at them incredulously for a moment. When he managed to speak he stumbled and stammered like a schoolboy. “Wh-Pushed? Pushed, did you say? Why in hell’s name would anyone want to push Hannah? She could have been…”

Kincaid thought nastily that for once Rennie’s aplomb had deserted him. “I thought you might be able to-” he began, when Rennie interrupted him.

“Have you phoned for the doctor? What about the police? They’ve been hanging about all day and now when they could be doing something useful-”

“Calm down, man. I hadn’t time to ring anyone. Perhaps-” Kincaid felt Hannah jerk beside him and she said softly, urgently, “Don’t Don’t leave me.”

“Perhaps,” he continued to Rennie, without looking at her, “you could go and ring them now.”

“You seem to be forever making me cups of tea.” Hannah gave a wan attempt at a smile.

“My lot in life,” answered Kincaid from the kitchen. “Born into the wrong era. I’m sure I would have made an excellent ‘gentleman’s gentleman’.”

“You as Jeeves? I don’t think so.” This time her smile was genuine, and it relieved Kincaid to see the lines in her face relax. With Rennie’s help he’d walked her up the stairs and into her suite, where they’d settled her on the sofa.

Rennie hovered around Hannah, obviously wanting to speak to her without Kincaid’s watchdog presence. Hannah seemed to have relaxed since her earlier, almost instinctive recoil from her son, but she hadn’t looked at or spoken to him directly. Kincaid had no intention of leaving as yet.

Rennie gave in, finally, with a return of some of his habitual grace. “Look, I can see I’m not wanted just now. But you will let me know if I can do anything?” He spoke to Hannah, not Kincaid, and when he reached the door he turned and addressed her once more. “I’m sorry, Hannah.” Kincaid had the impression he had not been referring to her fall.

Kincaid returned from the kitchen bearing a tray with two cups of tea and a plate of digestive biscuits. “Teatime.”

“Is it?” Hannah took a biscuit tentatively. “Do you know, I don’t think I had any lunch. No wonder I feel so weak.” Kincaid pulled the armchair across and sat near enough to hand her tea and biscuits. He searched her face as she accepted the cup.

When she had eaten and drunk a little, he spoke. “Hannah, tell me what happened today between you and Patrick. I think you must, you know,” he added, softening the demand a bit.

She swallowed some tea and the cup rattled as she replaced it in the saucer. “I never meant it to go like that. I never meant-” Hannah turned her head away, her eyes, already red and swollen with earlier weeping, filling. “First I accused him of all these horrible things, all those things you told me. The words just came out. I couldn’t seem to stop them. Then I told him…”

“That you were his mother?” Kincaid prompted.

She gave a little hiccuppy laugh. “What a prize I am. Suspicious. Shrewish. No wonder he wasn’t too thrilled with the prospect.” Hannah hugged her arms against her chest and began to shiver in earnest.

“You’re in shock.” Kincaid leaned over her, contrite. “I shouldn’t be pestering you-”

“No. No, I have to tell you. I want to tell you.” Her voice rose and Kincaid watched her struggle to regain control. “I did everything wrong, you see,” she continued, modulating carefully now. “From the very beginning. Successful. Independent. That’s how I saw myself. Under no one’s jurisdiction. I thought of marriage and family as a loss of autonomy.” Hannah twisted the edge of the blanket in her fingers. “It was all such a sham. The truth was I had nothing to give, nothing to share.” She raised her eyes to his. “And Patrick… I think what Patrick resented the most was my waiting-if knowing him was so important to me, why hadn’t I found him years ago? And I could have, he was right about that. With all my illusions of strength and independence, I never faced my father. My father…”

Kincaid waited while she tried to find a more comfortable position. Exhaustion tugged at her facial muscles, her eyelids drooped involuntarily. “Hannah-”

“No. I must tell you, before it all slips away…”

Kincaid subsided, powerless against her compulsion to talk. He’d seen it often enough in victims of accidents, or shock, but Hannah was more coherent than most.

“Patrick… How could I explain what happened to me the last year? Biological clock’s stupid, I know,” her lips twisted in a faint smile, “but when I knew, finally, that I’d never have another child… something changed in me. Suddenly everything seemed so empty. Everything I’d done so pointless-”

Kincaid was startled into protest. “You’re not going to trot out that old saw about women only finding fulfillment through marriage and children? I don’t believe it of you.”

She started to shake her head, then lightly touched her fingers to the back. “No…” She paused so long Kincaid began to think she’d drifted away altogether. Then she said quietly, “I don’t think sex has much to do with it. It’s the little lies, the accumulation of self-deception. Armor, all armor, hiding behind armor, like some soft-bodied sea creature. Afraid of…”

“Afraid of what, Hannah?” Kincaid didn’t trust the delicacy of his touch.

Again came the almost imperceptible shake of the head. “Losing…” Her eyes skated away from his. She picked up her forgotten cup and drank the cold tea thirstily, retreating from whatever precipice she had approached.

Hannah blinked and then closed her eyes, the dark lashes fanning out against her cheeks. The empty teacup tilted in her hand. Kincaid had reached to take it from her when she spoke again, her eyes still shut. “One day I realized that if I didn’t wake the next morning, no one would miss me. Except Miles.

“Miles and I were lovers once, in the beginning.” Hannah smiled a little at the memory. “He lost interest when his health began to fail. Or maybe I hadn’t enough to give, even then. Still, I’m all he has, except for some wretched nephew he doesn’t care for, and I’ve neglected him terribly since I became so… obsessed with Patrick.”

She opened her eyes and looked at Kincaid, the late afternoon light shifting her irises from hazel to green, a green almost as clear as Patrick Rennie’s. “Obsession… a selfish preoccupation,” she said dreamily, then continued more forcefully. “What right had I to find Patrick and spy on him, passing judgement on his qualifications as a son? I could have gone to his office and told him the truth straight off, given him a chance to start on equal footing. Instead…” A desolate little shrug summarized the outcome.

“It seems to me,” Kincaid said gently, “that you’ve castigated yourself pretty thoroughly for mistakes anyone could have made. We don’t any of us have all the answers before-hand. Why is it too late for you and Patrick? Why can’t you tell him what you told me? What have you to lose?”

“I… He doesn’t want-”

“How do you know what Patrick wants or doesn’t want? He didn’t give me the impression just now of a man determined to sever all connection.” Unless, of course, thought Kincaid, Patrick Rennie had seen an advantage in adopting a new role, that of the contrite son lovingly reunited with his mother.

“It’s odd.” Hannah interrupted his unpleasant speculation. “After everything that’s happened today I feel terribly detached. It’s like seeing things through the wrong end of a telescope. Clear and distant. I doubt it will last. I do see, though, that I can’t go chasing after Patrick expecting him to plug the gaps in my life.”

Hannah’s voice had grown drowsier. Kincaid cleared up the tea things and came back to her, finding that he could not let her rest quite yet. The unasked question hung on him like a weight. “Hannah, could it have been Patrick who pushed you down the stairs?”

She did not bridle, as she had before at any suggestion of Patrick’s guilt, but answered him with sleepy thought-fulness. “Of course I’ve wondered. I’d be an idiot not to, I suppose-but I don’t think so.” She paused, searching for the right words. “There was such… malice in that shove. I felt it.” Her brow furrowed in concentration. “Today I saw a bit of the real Patrick, not my idealized version of him. There is some anger running under the surface, some bitterness, but also the ability to laugh at himself, to put his feelings in perspective. I just can’t see him hating that viciously.” She began to shiver again. “Why would anyone hate me that much?”

“What did he-”

A knock at the door interrupted his question, but Hannah put a hand out to stop him as he rose. “I won’t tell you what he told me about Cassie and Penny. You’ll have to ask him yourself. You do understand?” Kincaid hesitated, then nodded. There was no use bullying her-he’d begun to gauge her stubbornness. And besides, he did understand.

Anne Percy stood patiently at the door, doctor’s bag in hand. Kincaid’s heart gave an inexplicable leap and he cursed himself for a fool.

Kincaid met Chief Inspector Nash on the stairs. “I’m just on my way to take your Miss Alcock’s statement.” Nash spoke without preamble, in that sneering tone that made Kincaid bite back a childish retort.

“Dr. Percy’s with her now. She doesn’t seem too badly hurt.”

“Is that so?” said Nash, dripping sarcasm. “Well, well. Now, isn’t that surprising?”

“Just what are you insinuating?” Kincaid struggled to control the exasperation in his voice.

“Well now, laddie, has it not occurred to you that a “fall is a very convenient thing? All alone, no witnesses, a little tumble down the stairs?”

“I found her myself. She was unconscious!”

“Very convenient, as I said, to be discovered by a sympathetic policeman.” Nash clucked and said with great condescension, “And laddie, anyone can fake a faint.” Nash fluttered his eyelids and moaned.

Kincaid closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Have you any idea, Chief Inspector, why Miss Alcock would risk breaking her neck?”

“It seems to me that if you’re bumping off people right and left it doesn’t hurt to appear to be a victim yourself. It’s an old ploy.”

“What possible motive could she have for killing Sebastian or Penny?”

“What possible motive could any of them have? You tell me, laddie. You’re the one’s so chummy with her.” Nash smiled at him impishly, and Kincaid felt the exchange slipping into utter farce.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you, Inspector. You’ll have to ask her yourself.”

Kincaid plunged out the front door and shook his head as if the cold air would clear it. Even a small dose of Chief Inspector Nash made him feel like he’d wandered into a pea-soup fog. He had some questions to ask Patrick Rennie and he wasn’t inclined to invite Nash along and allow him to make hash of the interview.

He paced around the darkening garden, wishing he had Gemma or Peter Raskin to use as a sounding board. The first floor of Followdale House was broken into sections by fire doors-one divided the area containing his suite and the balcony door from the area containing Hannah’s suite and the main staircase. That area in turn was separated from the suites on the other side of the house by another door. As he had come through the door between his suite and the staircase he could have sworn he heard the far door closing.

He hadn’t thought anything about it at the time, not until Patrick Rennie had come in the front door, flushed and breathing hard, minutes after he’d found Hannah. Kincaid had no way of knowing how long Hannah had lain there, but it might have been only minutes. Rennie could have run down the back staircase and around the building to the front, anxious to judge the results of his attempt on Hannah’s life.

Kincaid returned to the house, hesitating for a moment in the front hall. Where was Peter Raskin? Had anyone tracked down the other guests and taken their statements?

He stood quite still, listening for some sound, some intimation of life or movement in the house. It amazed him that a house this size, with nearly a dozen people in it, could seem so utterly deserted. The noisy cocktail hour chatter of the first evening seemed almost unimaginable now-the guests had certainly lost their taste for one another’s company.

He walked through the darkened reception area toward the sitting room, where a dim lamp cast a solitary pool of light. A slight sound from the bar drew Kincaid to the door.

Patrick Rennie sat alone at a table, morosely sliding a glass in its condensate puddle. “Just the man I wanted to see,” Kincaid said, and Rennie’s head shot up.

“How is she?”

“Dr. Percy’s with her. I don’t think she’s badly hurt.” Kincaid retrieved a beer from under the counter and sat down opposite Rennie. “Where is everyone?”

“Holed up in their rooms expecting fallout, I imagine. Chief Inspector Nash sent that constable around to take statements. I don’t know if he’s rounded everyone up yet. Listen,” Rennie changed tack, not to be distracted from what was on his mind, “I behaved abominably toward Hannah today. And now this.” Rennie waved his hand vaguely toward the stairs, then met Kincaid’s eyes. “Did she tell you about me?”

“Yes.”

“And did she tell you what an ass I made of myself this morning?”

“She said you resented her barging into your life,” Kincaid answered drily.

Rennie rubbed long fingers across his forehead. “What she must have put herself through… and then I stomped all over her with all the sensitivity of an elephant.” His eyebrows lifted in the self-mocking little smile Hannah must have seen. “It was the shock, I think. All those years of wondering who she was, what she was like, why she let me go-it all came back to me. Is it too late, do you think, to start again?”

Kincaid didn’t relish the role of Miss Lonelyhearts under the best of circumstances, and particularly not when one party might have tried to hasten the other’s demise. “I couldn’t say.” He sipped his beer, then added easily, “A great deal would depend on where were you today just before you came in.”

Color flooded into Rennie’s face. “God, I’ve been an bloody fool. You were right about Cassie, you know. It started last year. Marta knew something was going on but I badgered her into coming here anyway. I thought Cassie cared about me, that she was even worth risking my future.” He shook his head as if bewildered by his own stupidity. “But nothing went right this visit. This afternoon I decided I had to pin her down, sort things out. I went across to the cottage and started to knock but the door wasn’t quite shut. Well, it’s the usual old story. Why should I have been so surprised?” He smiled, but his color was still high and his eyes didn’t quite meet Kincaid’s.

“Compromising?”

“Fairly.”

“And who was the lucky chap?”

Rennie looked away. “Graham Frazer.”